humorous

UK/ˈhjuːməɹəs/US/ˈhjuːməɹəs/

adjectiveB2Common in everyday speech and writing · #6,938 of 15,258leans written

Humorous means meant to be funny. A humorous remark, humorous writing, humorously put.

Watch the spelling: humour keeps the u in British English and humorous drops it on both sides of the Atlantic, which catches people out constantly. The word once meant governed by the bodily humours, and a person's humour was their temperament.

Definitions of humorous

1adjectivehumorousMeant to be funny.B2
“She gave a humorous speech at the wedding that had everyone laughing.”

humorous is a quality of humour.

Also accepted in games: comic

Where it comes from

From humour, from Latin umor, moisture — the four bodily humours were thought to govern temperament.

Middle English
humorous
English, today
humorous

From Middle English humorous (compare Medieval Latin hūmorōsus), equivalent to humor + -ous.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Word Building

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humorous in the wild

Fantasy comedy, also called comic fantasy, is a subgenre of fantasy that is primarily humorous in intent and tone.
Fantasy comedy
With his unconventional rhyming schemes, he was declared by The New York Times to be the country's best-known producer of humorous poetry.
Ogden Nash
A common convention in romantic comedies is the "meet-cute", a humorous or unexpected encounter that creates initial tension and sets up the romantic storyline.
Romantic comedy
In combination with a refrain, it forms a limerick song, a traditional humorous drinking song often with obscene verses.
Limerick (poetry)
Prop comedy is a comedy genre in which performers use humorous objects, or conventional objects in humorous ways.
Prop comedy

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

humor

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